Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/39

 extras across the room at him, he smiled the rich, tolerant smile of Alexander at the Macedon polo grounds.

"Well, Lester," said Jack, "why the Cheshire-cat grin?"

"I've sold sixty dollars' worth of verse," said Lester, benignly; "also I've had a raise."

"My God!" said Harry. "Think how many starving cubists you could endow on that! There'll be a riot in Greenwich Village."

"Pity the poor bartenders on a night like this!" cried Jack. Then they went to Browne's chophouse for dinner. After a three-finger steak and several beakers of dog's nose, Lester was readily persuaded to enounce the first number of his sonnet sequence, which had accreted or (as its author expressed it) nucleolated, while he was walking home from the office.

"Sonnet, in the Petrarchan mode, item No. 1," he proclaimed: